"Chess is very simple. He goes there, I go here. I go there, he goes here."

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Weird Quantum Chess

As if regular chess wasn't hard enough. These geeks had to go on and invent a new form of chess - Quantum Chess. In this format, a queen, say, could also be another piece, maybe even a pawn. And, according to one of this game's makers, "You only know what a piece really is once you touch the piece. Basically, planning ahead is impossible."

Computers can search all possible outcomes of all possible moves in conventional chess and beat even top human players, so Akl wanted to make the computation more difficult.

He decided to have the pieces mimic the behaviour of very small particles such as atoms and electrons, which follow the laws of quantum mechanics. According to the principle of superposition in quantum physics, such particles can simultaneously be in multiple states at once, but collapse into a single state when an attempt is made to measure their position, momentum or some other aspect.